LIST | 6 things you definitely didn’t know about Maro Itoje

Here are six things you definitely didn’t know about England second-row Maro Itoje.

So far in his rugby career, he has won four English Premiership titles with Saracens, three European Rugby Champions Cup titles, and three Six Nations Championship titles.

Here we look at five lesser known facts about the 26-year-old lock.

His full name is much more of a mouthful. The lock was born Oghenemaro Miles Itoje in Camden, London on 28 October 1994 to Nigerian parents.

He is the cousin of Bath's loosehead prop Beno Obano. Gloucester speedster Ollie Thorley is also Itoje’s cousin, after his grandfather re-married a Nigerian woman who is the Saracens lock’s aunt.

Maro got a rugby scholarship to London Harrow school when he was 11. He then studied for a Politics degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies in Bloomsbury, London at the same time as starting his rugby career.

The current England star writes poetry in his free time and tried his hand at modelling too. Maro starred alongside Amelia Windsor, cousin of Prince Harry, on a sports luxe-themed Tatler shoot for their October 2018 issue. Rumours in the press followed that the pair had begun dating, but this was never confirmed or denied by the second-row.

The Saracens second-row is nicknamed 'the pearl'. He was given the name by one of his teammates at the Christmas social after he wore a cream turtleneck and the name has stuck.